Take Me Out In A Pine Box

We just surpassed a year living in Nova Scotia and I still struggle with the actual realization we live here. I struggle more at times the fact we pulled off what we did in the environment that we did.

I won’t go into the absolute torture that was living where we were living prior to here. That is a blog or seven in of itself. Long story very short we lived in a hell hole of a basement apartment. The evening of our last day in Ontario was utter chaos. Everyone reading this has experienced moving before. It’s always exciting what the future will be but the actual act of doing it sucks worse than getting wood ash under your eyelid (Yeah…That happened).

I’ve moved a lot in my adult life. Since I moved from my home town of Port Elgin, ON to Listowel, ON back in 2012, I have moved 8 times since then, finally landing here in Nova Scotia just prior to turning 35. I’m accustomed to moving around. But moving down the street or down the highway is not the same as moving 2000km away.

Some things are the same. You take things, put them in boxes, put them onto a truck, and off you go. This time however, the logistics are massively more complicated. And because why the fuck not…Throw in record breaking rain fall into the whole thing while you’re at it.

So the night of the move, our final night in Ontario was something else. We had hired a moving company that specifically moves freight from Ontario to Nova Scotia and back again. We had some friends, neighbours, and family over to help us load the truck. We all hung out in the evening and moved a ton of boxes and things outside.

Then the rain started.

Finally around 9:30pm on Tuesday September 21st 2021, a modified pickup F3500 with a sleeper cab hauling a 42ft box trailer arrived.

Matthew Nickerson Hauling. The Truck and Trailer that arrived at our house (Not our house or picture)

So now the work began. With the driver helping we had 5 people hauling everything up the tiny stairwell from our apartment, through the rain, and onto the front of the trailer. Eventually the driver just took over sorting the space in the front of the trailer and cramming everything in like a professional Tetris player. If the rain was coming down in buckets it would have been an improvement. It got stronger and wetter the longer the evening went. There were points we picked up a box that was on the driveway, covered in a tarp, and the bottom of the box still broke open and the contents spilled all over the wet driveway. It was a mess.

Through the soaking rain and enough swearing and frustration we finally got everything loaded onto the trailer we needed. We bid adieu to the driver and he headed off to pick up more freight before he would arrive in Nova Scotia on the Friday. All that was left in the apartment was some things we were leaving behind, our travel essentials, a few blankets and pillows, the animals, and us.

We said goodbye to everyone and we began to wind down for the night. It was around 11pm and Quin and I had to get up at about 3am to load the cars with stuff and creatures and begin the drive. We had to be in Nova Scotia on Thursday the 23rd to meet our Real Estate Agent at 9:30am Atlantic Time, so timing was essential (and also an hour earlier than Eastern Time). We finished packing our bags we needed for the trip, we moved everything else into the living room, we set up blankets and pillows on the floor, and we called it a night.

3:00am came really quick. Neither of us got any sort of decent sleep as you would expect sleeping on the floor prior to a life changing day. The rain was still pouring outside. We moved the blankets, guinea pigs, and cat into my car, day-one bags and dogs into Quin’s car, and by around 5:00am we looked back at what was going to no longer be our apartment, and no longer our province, and were on our way.

Quin has tremendous anxiety when it comes to driving, so I led the way. I threw the GPS on my phone and we headed off. Because of the early morning mid-week drive (And the torrential rain that could have led to localized flooding), we decided to *not* deal with the 401 through Toronto and for the first time in my life we took the Toll Road 407.

There were a few times we needed to pull over to address some of Quin’s driving anxiety, or to make sure we were still both doing okay. I drive professionally but there is a difference between driving a truck through the rain, and a small sedan through it. We finally got through the 407 and ended up back onto the 401 outside of Toronto and we were well on our way with the sun finally coming up. We ended up crossing through the Quebec border around the late morning.

To make a longer story shorter, fuck Quebec. Quin literally called me to slow down a bit so they could glue to my bumper so that we could be neck and neck through the province as drivers in Quebec are….Well….Really awful.

Our intention after leaving Ontario was to make it to Fredericton, NB to sleep for the night. As we crossed into New Brunswick, it was already getting to around 5:00pm, so roughly 12 hours since we left Ontario. From the border, Fredericton would have been another 4ish hours. After a phone call to my parents and a stop for gas, we decided the best decision was to stop earlier before it got dark. So a quick roadside Google search found us a dog friendly hotel in Grand Falls, NB. I called them, booked the room, and about two hours later we landed at the hotel. I checked in, got the key, and Quin, myself, and the boys wandered into the hotel room by around 7:30pm. The cat and guinea pigs stayed the night in my car.

One thing that was the first big change to moving to the Maritimes is that everything closes earlier. This isn’t Southern Ontario anymore. By 8-9pm, everything was closed. Fortunately there was a McDonald’s just down the road still open and that fed the four of us with a quick 10 minute walk. We went to bed maybe around 11pm.

The alarm came really quick at 3:30am. We had to be at the house for 9:30am Atlantic Time, so sleep was secondary. Fortunately we were already in Atlantic Time when we stopped at the hotel, unfortunately that also meant we lost an hour while driving. Quick showers and bathroom breaks were had and we were back in the cars long before the sun even thought about coming up. We decided we were going to stop at a Tim Horton’s for coffee on the way down to Nova Scotia. Unfortunately we did not anticipate that nothing in the Maritimes opens before 6am; especially when you need to use the bathroom in an emergency fashion.

We finally found a Truck Stop Tim Horton’s around 6am just before Fredericton. We got some breakfast, bathroom breaks, and much needed coffee. A quick 10 minute turnaround from there and we were back on our way.

I lived in Oromocto, NB for 3 months when I was transferred there during my time in the Canadian Armed Forces. But when Quin and I passed the two exits for Oromocto and CFB Gagetown, I had suddenly gone further east than I ever had in my life. I am now driving into uncharted territory and the sun was just starting to come up. That was such an emotional experience that I am now entering a brand new life and I’m not even there yet. Quin even called me just as we passed the exits as they also knew I’m where I’ve never been before. They asked how I was feeling. To put it bluntly I was rather emotional, but very excited. At this point I was just taking everything in. The sun was rising in front of us, the skies were completely free of any clouds, and the trees, the highway; everything looked perfect.

The moment I entered Nova Scotia for the first time

We obviously did this during the Covid-19 Pandemic, and Atlantic Canada was *strict* when it came to it. We needed proof of two vaccinations, and out of Province plates needed reason for entering the Province. Fortunately because Quin is so engaged in all the specific details of things, we had all the paperwork needed to pass through the checkpoint without issue.

We crossed the border near Amherst around 8:30am, cleared the covid check, and were an hour away from our new home. As we drove down the highway we saw signs for a toll section ahead of us. Quin called to check in and we talked and decided to go around (We didn’t know the cost, form of payment, or anything about it at the time). So instead we got off at Highway 4 that takes you through Wentworth Valley. I cannot put into words how I felt driving down this back highway. The beauty, the views, the ski hill we passed, it was all out of a story book. I couldn’t stop repeating the words “I live here?” over and over. What I was looking at was 20 minutes from my home. And since living here for over a year now, that is just this province in a nut shell.

As we pulled onto Plains Road, then eventually turned onto the dirt road that is Gray Road, I pulled over and let Quin pass. I got us all the way here. We were 2 minutes away, but I wanted Quin to be the one to take us home.

One of the first pictures of our house we took. It was after the Internet installation showed up.

We pulled into our driveway at 9:40am. 16+ hours and 4 provinces of travel and we ended up only being 10 minutes late, which is realistically on time by Maritime standards. We finally met our Real Estate agent we had countless video calls with and got the tour of the house. We could finally touch the things we wanted to touch. We were blown away by just how big the house felt. Videos and pictures didn’t do it justice. This house was huge.

We asked if we could unload a few things into the house before going into Truro to finalize everything. Lynn (Our real estate agent) said that would be fine. So we got the Guinea Pigs and the cat inside as well as a bunch of stuff out of Quin’s car. We kept the dogs with us and left my car at the house and went into the 3rd largest city in Nova Scotia (population of 12,000).

Navigating Truro as a newcomer was an experience. For my Ontario people, it’s like driving through a Parry Sound sized Hamilton. The downtown is a lot of one way streets, the traffic lights were awful, and the pot holes were enough to swallow the car. We found parking near the RBC and I went in to take out the down payment for the house before going to the lawyer and finalizing on everything. Fortunately the bank and the lawyers office were only a 10 minute walk away (10 minutes seems to be a recurring theme in all of this).

I left the office after signing the things I needed to sign, dotting all the T’s and crossing all the I’s and I held an envelope that said we bought a house. I walked back to the car, walked up to Quin’s window, handed them the envelope to hold onto, and told them “We just bought a farm”. “What have we done?” was all they could muster in response in an obviously exhausting and emotional time. Our current time in Truro was short lived as the Internet installation showed up early to the house so we needed to head back to manage that situation. Lynn was still at the house taking the For Sale signs down. We got a big hug and congratulations from her and we did another big walkthrough around the outside this time while the Internet was getting hooked up. We still needed to go back into town *again* for some groceries and to order our bed (Our old mattress was on the moving truck and not arriving until tomorrow).

So after some quick shopping back in town we toured over to Leon’s to buy our King Sized bed. After some bank jiggering as I have a limit on debit purchases we were able to finally buy the bed we wanted. Now enters maybe the craziest part of the entire story. Not the moving, not the rain, not the journey to get here, but bringing a king sized bed and two box springs home with a station wagon.

King Size Mattress, and two box springs strapped to the top of Quin’s car.

Yeah, that was the car. Thank God for ratchet straps and my knowledge of load securement from my career. We obviously wanted to take the back roads back to the house but we didn’t know where they were. We got some directions from the staff at the Leon’s and I was ready to drive us back. To my surprise, Quin wanted to drive. They conquered a massive emotional mountain driving all the way here; they wanted to tackle this one. I put the house on my GPS, avoided highways, and we set out back to the house for hopefully the last time today. Needless to say we made a lot of people’s morning as we drove by. Cell phones were taken out at red lights, people smiling and laughing as we waved back driving this monstrosity through the town of Truro and finally to the rural highway. The best thing was driving past a number of farms and the cows literally stopped and watched us drive by. I don’t think Quin broke 60km/h and we pulled over a few times to let cars behind us go by.

We got back to the house and unloaded the mattress into our bedroom. We had a bed. We had a house. We were home.

Home.

Even writing this blog right now the whole thing feels odd. We got remarkably lucky. Not that I don’t appreciate what we have now and where we are but there are times it still feels like I’m on vacation. The amount of things that had to line up at exactly the right time in order for this journey to not only happen but to go as smoothly as it did. From Quin’s due diligence, to the moving truck, to the help we had, to me lining a job out here, to the closing date, to the inspections, to the to the to the. After we collapsed on the first house we went after, Quin found this place 6 minutes after it was listed. Three and a half weeks later we landed in Nova Scotia. Obviously things were planned and boxes were packed and we were ready to go but looking back at three and a half weeks from offer to close on a house 2000km away was a remarkable accomplishment.

I don’t think I’ll ever experience a feeling again like I did when I pulled into the driveway of this home on September 23rd, 2021. Whenever I come home from work I still get this overwhelming emotion of “I live here. I’m home”. It’s in such stark contrast with the emotion of pulling in front of the house where our basement apartment was, which was filled with dread and despair. What an amazing and emotional journey we achieved, one of which I will never do again. If I’m ever going back to Ontario, I’m flying.

As Quin put it when we got here and I asked them how they felt:

“Take me out of here in a pine box”.